If the patient’s nipples have not been toughened during pregnancy or if flat or retracted nipples have not been satisfactorily brought out, it may be necessary for the nurse to employ the treatment to these ends which were described in the chapter on pre-natal care. In the meantime the baby may have to nurse through a shield until the nipple is brought out prominently enough for him to grasp it well. =Stripping.= Sometimes in cases of depressed nipples, which the baby cannot grasp, or when the baby is too feeble, to nurse at the breast, milk is withdrawn from the breast by means of so-called “stripping.” The nurse should scrub her hands thoroughly with hot water and soap and dry them on a sterile towel before beginning. The breast is grasped by placing the thumb and forefinger of the right hand on the areola on opposite sides of the nipple but well below it. The nipple is then raised from the breast by a quick, lifting and rolling motion of the thumb and finger, accompanied by slight pressure. A sterile medicine glass should be held in position to receive the milk which spurts from the nipple, but the glass should not touch the breast. (Fig. 128.) [Illustration: FIG. 128.—Position of thumb and finger below nipple on areola, in stripping breasts. (From photograph taken at The Long Island College Hospital.) ] There is a knack about stripping and it requires practice, but those doctors who advocate it feel that it empties the breast, when this is necessary, with less disturbance than that caused by pumping, and as the milk is projected directly from the nipple into the sterile glass, without any of it running over the nipple or breast as may happen in pumping, it has the additional advantage of always being sterile. Extreme gentleness must be used; the openings of the milk ducts must not be touched by the fingers, and the thumb and finger must not press deeply enough to reach the glandular tissue itself. If done properly stripping neither stimulates nor bruises the breast tissue nor does it cause the patient even temporary discomfort. =Abdominal Binders and Bed Exercises.= There is considerable difference of opinion about the advantage of using abdominal binders upon the puerperal patient while she is in bed, and the nurse will accordingly care for the patients of some doctors who use them and for those of others who do not. The application of a moderately snug binder for the first day or two is a fairly common practice, for multiparæ, particularly, are often made very uncomfortable by the sudden release of tension on their flabby abdominal walls; a discomfort which a binder will relieve. And during the first few days after the patient gets up and walks about, she is sometimes given great comfort by a binder that is put on as she lies on her back, and is adjusted snugly about her hips and the lower part of her abdomen.